Category Archives: Improvisational quilting

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One of the things I love about blogging is hearing from people who comment and share their ideas. Here are a couple of ideas that I thought you might enjoy, too.

When I blogged about some household items that are useful for quilting, Peggy commented that she cuts up her old calendars and uses the numbers to label her blocks and rows.

It was the perfect time of year for that handy hint, so I promptly cut up an old calendar. The numbers worked great for labeling pieces for a complex project. I clipped them to groups of fabric for the various sections of the quilt using binder clips–an idea I got from Judy Niemeyer’s class years ago.

Another friend, Claire, responded to my post on making single-color slabs by asking what I do with fabric that is a mixture such that no one color predominates. I had been cutting out sections based on the predominant color, and that seemed to work. But…

When I came to this piece, I realized I had NO desire to cut out chunks small enough to be mainly one color. Then I started looking and saw that I had a number of prints from which I would NEVER be able to cut single-color pieces of any size.

So I made a block of multi-color pieces. It is pretty wild, but so were some of the fabrics that went into it. I’ll see how it looks with the single-color blocks when I assemble a quilt. What do you think? Make more of these or give up on the truly multicolored fabrics for slabs?

The Quilt Alliance auction of donated art quilts has started. I’m sorry I didn’t get this announcement out last week, but there is still time to bid in Week 1 of the auction if you hurry! My quilt is in Week 2, which starts November 27. Check out the auction here: http://www.QuiltAllianceAuction.org

This is the “promotional image” for my quilt, which is 16 inches square per the contest requirements:

But really, I encourage you to check out all the quilts. There is one I really like (other than my own!) and will be bidding on. If you don’t know about the Quilt Alliance, I encourage you to check out their activities here.

Second link: My friend Melanie at Catbird Quilts recently pointed out a little research project she found. Another blogger, Vicki Welsh, posted about testing a variety of methods to save a quilt that has been washed with bleeding of one (or more) fabrics. The results are very interesting, and are also useful for those of us who pre-wash (at least some of) our fabrics. Check out Vicki’s post here. Vicki encourages you to share her test results, and I encourage you to be sure to link to her original post when you do.

Like this:

My entry in this year’s Quilt Alliance contest was chosen by judge Linda Pumphrey for her Judge’s Choice Award! Here’s the quilt:

For Quilt Alliance contest 2017, 16″ x 16″

And here’s Linda’s comment:

I love the graphic abstract and bold colors of this little quilt. The quilt is beautifully executed with strong visual impact.

Of course I am thrilled to be chosen!

All quilts entered in the contest will be displayed at QA’s “Quilters Take Manhattan” event as well as at International Quilt Festival in Houston. They will then be auctioned to raise money to support the Quilt Alliance’s many projects.

Here’s the link to the auction site, where you can see all quilts entered in the contest:

After 3 weeks and 3 quilts, here is the one I finally finished for the 2017 Quilt Alliance contest. The first two quilts were OK, but I like this one best, so off it goes.

For Quilt Alliance contest 2017, 16″ x 16″

The contest theme this year is “voices”. As I made this little maze, I thought of college students in their world of endless possibilities, talking all night about the meaning of life. I thought the bright colors and the maze were a good representation of that.

Detail of the quilt for the 2017 Quilt Alliance contest

The fabric is Cherrywood hand dyes, except for the bright yellow, which is a batik. I presume it is obvious that I cut everything with scissors and improvised the piecing as I went along. I quilted it on my Bernina, using lightweight medium grey thread to lend texture without showing too much.

Next week: a quilt to use as a wedding guest book. Thanks for visiting!

To be exact, YOW is the name of the quilt, not my reaction to teaching a curved piecing class 🙂

YOW is the class I’ll be teaching at Studio Stitch in Greensboro

The class is at Studio Stitch in Greensboro (NC), one of my favorite shops. To my surprise, I don’t have a picture of the quilt I’m using as a class sample, so I had to lift this one from the Studio Stitch website. There is no pattern for this quilt; it is just what I did with some really bright batiks and some nice templates from Elisa’s Backporch Designs.

I’m going to teach at least 3 different ways to piece these curves, so most anybody with some sewing experience can find success with at least one of the methods.

I got out some examples of my quilts with curved piecing yesterday to have them for display in class, and I was surprised at how many there are. Then I found all these pictures of other things I’ve made with curved piecing, so here are a few.

An attempt at improvised New York Beauty blocks

My “cocktail pillow”–to put out when you have people over for cocktails! (As if!)

When I volunteered to arrange programs for one of my modern guilds this year, I didn’t realize the job included coming up with a challenge each month. Luckily, there were lots of ideas for guild challenges in internet-world, so the challenges weren’t too much of a challenge. (Sorry, that just slipped in!)

I thought it might be helpful to other modern guilds if I posted our proposed challenges, since I’m sure other folks are in need of ideas, too. So here’s the first one: slabs. If you don’t know what a slab quilt block is, Canadian quilter Cheryl Arkison published the idea in her bookSunday Morning Quilts. You can see a picture and instructions here.

Slabs can be addictive! And a quilt of many colors is fun.

In January, each member received brief instructions on how to make a “slab” of a single color of the rainbow. Sort of. While trying to figure out how to set up the rainbow challenge, I found this quote from Isaac Asimov (one of my heroes):

It is customary to list indigo as a color lying between blue and violet, but it has never seemed to me that indigo is worth the dignity of being considered a separate color. To my eyes it seems merely deep blue.

So our colors for the challenge are red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple. Seems like the main value of indigo and violet is that they let us spell out ROY G BIV. Huh.

Our slabs are 15-1/2 inches square, to be 15 inch finished blocks. Each person makes one in her assigned color, then can make as many others as she wants in as many of the six basic colors as she wants. At the next meeting, we’ll put all our slabs in a pile and each person’s name will go in a basket once for each block she turns in. Then we’ll draw a name and somebody gets all the blocks. Of course she’s expected to make something wonderful with those blocks before the next meeting!

I e-mailed examples of slab quilts to guild members as part of the challenge and also took some of my quilts to show.

Cheryl Arkison is one of several people to suggest putting together scraps of the same color to make a quilt block (or fabric from which to cut quilt pieces). Cheryl calls hers “slabs” and makes them big–15 inches square finished.

Above is the quilt I made from a slab swap with one of my quilt groups a couple of years ago. I had asked for slabs made from the yellow/orange family, and I loved what I got. But I’m not one to leave well enough alone, so I cut them up and made the quilt shown above.

A relative-who-will-remain-nameless looked through my quilts online and asked for something similar, but in a larger size.

I’ve had fun collecting orange and yellow fabrics. My friend Linda donated a large bag of orange “scraps”; I felt free to ask her since she claims to hate orange 😀 Then she brought me a big cut of solid orange to go with the scraps!

Linda even found an orange patterned bag to put her scraps in!

The rest came from my stash and from a few things I bought while travelling. I improvised the squares, featuring a few funky fabrics in each one from the fabrics I bought especially for this quilt.

Then I used Moda Bella Amelia Blue to sash each square and cut the sashing so they are all wonky. Each will finish 18″ square with sashing.

This one will be big enough that it will need to go to the long-arm quilter. I’ll have more pictures when it’s finished.

This quilt was started about 2 years ago when I bought a scrap pack of Cherrywood hand dyed fabrics. The blocks are entirely from Cherrywood scrap packs plus that cute print with the words on it, which is a Robert Kaufman fabric.

The dark sashing is made from black plus little pieces of the darkest almost-black solids I could find. All are Cotton Couture from Michael Miller.

I quilted this on my home machine, using randomly-spaced, gently curving, lines from edge to edge. I used Superior Bottom Line in the bobbin, which I always do. Top thread is a medium grey light weight polyester, Mettler Metrosene.

This is going to the Smoky Mountain Quilters show in September. This year the show is scheduled in conjunction with Western Carolina University’s Mountain Heritage Day, which I think is a great idea. Of course I’ll have pictures from that show when it happens.